Bougainvillea Memory

August 27, 2015 by curvylou 19 Comments

Bougainvillea is one of my favorite plants.

It grew wild on Teri’s father’s garage. It was huge, and vibrantly out of control, and absolutely lovely. We were constantly losing tennis balls in it, climbing up and stomping around after them, ripping holes in our jeans, but never finding a single ball.

Teri was my best friend growing up. When I was thirteen, I think, and Teri was twelve, she moved away. I remember the kitchen chair and the potted plant, the last two items into the moving truck. I was wordless, voiceless. I might have spoken, but I could never have expressed myself. I think I felt helpless to change anything; she was going, she was gone.

When the new people moved in and cut the bougainvillea off the garage, my heart broke.

How incomparable, then, to find that the vibrant red flowers can be used as textile dyes. How convenient that I work with textiles, and am learning how to dye. Perhaps I can make something to express the ways that bougainvillea makes me feel.

I’m not sure how well, or even if, the brilliant red will be maintained. I don’t know if it’s the right time of year to harvest the flowers for dye. I don’t know if it’s a vibrant dye, or a milder one. But I love the idea of an experiment.

To make the dye, I pruned my bougainvillea and separated the red flowers from the green leaves.

The flowers are macerated…

…water added…

…and left to steep for a day or two. You can boil dyestuff to release more dye more quickly, but reds from petals are apparently easily damaged. Since I’m trying to keep this as vibrant as I can, I gently heated the petals for a short time, no boiling.

After extraction, I strained the petals and poured an equal amount of dye into four jars and one stainless pot, then placed one yarn sample from the brass, copper, and alum mordants into three jars, two yarn samples from the iron mordant into the fourth jar, and a non-mordanted sample into the last jar.

I plan to have three samples each of the iron-mordanted yarns: one pre-mordanted sample, one post-mordanted sample, and one both pre-and post-mordanted. The idea that rust dyeing and iron mordants really intrigues me, hence the multiple iron samples.

Here are the iron jar, front left, and the copper jar, rear right, the same day I added the dye. Note the difference in the color of the liquid, which is entirely due to the mordants.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
And here’s the whole gang. I started a second pot of bougainvillea dye, as I’m uncertain the first batch will be strong enough.

In progress: rosemary and coffee dyes on wool yarn.
Upcoming: yellow dock and lichen dyes on wool and cotton muslin. Possibly fennel and ivy dyes too, as there are enormous stands on these invasive dye plants on Twin Peaks, where I used to live.